


The Things We Don't Say

by Draco_sollicitus



Series: After EpIX [3]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Found Family, Jedistormpilot Elements, Poe Would Never Leave His Child, Post Episode IX, Soft Ending, Soft Trio, Spoilers for Episode IX, Trio Rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21895741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: The war is over.For years, Poe has been at war, never sure if the next day would come, but willing to fight for the potential of a next day no matter what.Now, he finds himself on Tatooine, with two of the most important people in his life - and one of them needs Poe to answer an important question about something that went unsaid during the last day of the war.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Series: After EpIX [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575733
Comments: 8
Kudos: 168





	The Things We Don't Say

**Author's Note:**

> Note:
> 
> I have not seen EpIX, but have read/seen/encountered many spoilers. Without seeing the movie, and knowing what I know about found family and the themes of SW, here's what I think of that final scene of the film (from the perspective of a person who most certainly was there).

Poe woke up slowly for once. Since  _ Finalizer _ , and the chair, and his former friend looming over him with the mask of a monster, he had been jerking awake, gasping for air, usually only an hour or two after getting to sleep.

But that day, he woke up slowly. 

The light suggested they’d dropped out of Hyperspace and were wheels down on a planet: a glance at his chrono told him he’d slept for six Standard hours, a dreamless sleep that had settled over him like a shroud, blocking out every nightmare and flash of fear that usually seized him and shook him awake with as much force as Ren’s outstretched hand.

He sat up and blinked, grinding the heel of his hands against his eyes, trying to wipe away the grit that had risen with the opportunity so rarely available to him. Rubbing his neck, he became more fully aware of a warm spot to his right. 

“Finn?” Poe cleared his throat and tried again. “Hey, Finn?”

He might have gone off to try and contact Jannah, Poe reasoned. Wherever she’d run off to with Lando, he knew Finn was particularly concerned with her whereabouts. He snorted and swung his legs out of the narrow bunk that still always managed to hold three bodies, and smiled to think about Finn’s newest admirer.

Anyone with sense admired Finn, after all. He was brave, kind, funny, and strong; definitely not difficult to look at. Knowing Finn was the first step to loving him—and it wouldn’t take six hours of sleep for Poe to be able to appreciate that fact fully, but he was a little thrown that Finn, the best sleeper of the three of them, had woken up before him.

Next, Poe looked around for the other obvious candidate for him to see first thing waking up. 

“BeeBee? Buddy?” 

No answering chirp of Binary. 

“What the hells?” Poe rubbed his neck again, trying to work out the crick that had naturally formed while he was trying to cuddle two snuggly life forms at once. “Where did everyone go?”

He stood fully and groaned a little when his bad knee locked up; he staggered for a second before righting himself. 

“Anybody there?” 

“H-hello.”

There was a little quiet stammering voice that Poe was still getting used to. Kneeling on instinct, Poe knelt down and peered under a storage shelf. 

“Dio?” 

The nervous droid peered out at him from the shadows, and Poe smiled and gentled his voice more. “Hey, little guy. How are you doing?”

“Good. Thank you.” D-O rolled slightly away as he spoke, and Poe rested his hands on his legs in clear sight. 

“That’s great, buddy! Hey, did you see where BeeBee-Ate went?”

“Yes.” D-O perked up at the sound of his favorite droid. “With  _ Rey _ .” 

D-O said Rey's name the way Poe always thought it, with wonder and awe and respect and maybe a little bit of a four-letter-word that Poe couldn’t look in the face just yet.

“Did they go outside?” Poe jabbed his thumb towards the ramp.

“Yes.” D-O inched towards Poe. “Rey … s-s-sad.”

Poe’s heart twinged horribly. “She was?”

“Yes.”

“Wow, that’s not great, huh?” D-O seemed to agree. “Well, I’m gonna go look for them both. Wanna come with?”

“O-oh, no...thank you.” D-O rolled away again, timid and unsure, and he felt a pang of sadness for the little droid who’d come to fear so much.

Poe knew all about the cruelty available in this galaxy towards vulnerable things: little droids, lonely people, pilot’s hearts. He didn’t like that D-O had known so much of that cruelty, and he resolved to try and fix the way the droid saw the galaxy.

“Okay, buddy, that’s fine. Thanks for letting me know where Rey went. Really appreciate it.”

“Th-thank y-y-y-you.” 

If it were BB-8, Poe would reach out and pat him on the head, but he thought D-O might short circuit if Poe moved too quickly near him. Instead, he waved, slowly, near his shoulder, and stood. As he headed for the ramp, Poe felt a tinge of grief stain the edges of his lingering elation from their victory, and his contented happiness from sleeping well, surrounded by two of his favorite people.

It couldn’t be an accident that Rey had connected so easily to the abused, skittish droid; she’d known how to talk to him, how to convince him of her gentleness— Rey, who argued with Poe joyfully and sharply at the slightest provocation; Rey, who’d held a deadly blade to Zorri’s neck with no second thought; Rey, who’d brought down ships with lightning that leapt from her hand with no effort whatsoever. 

Rey, brave, strong, headstrong Rey could sense the fear in a little, tiny droid who’d been left at the mercy of the worst sorts of people; and, while that instinct spoke volumes of her kindness, it also spoke volumes of her past. The past that kept her awake through the night more than Poe, the sadness that dragged her from the bunk often, that had her gazing out the Starviewer as she stood silently, by herself, through the early hours of the morning, grappling with a sadness Poe would do anything to soothe.

(They fought in the daylight, and often, bickering and arguing with enough heat to keep Finn on his toes as mediator, their words almost always fierce and sharp; at night, Poe wanted nothing but softness for Rey. With Rey. Nothing but  _ soft _ for the woman who saved them all, and had known how to do it, and had done it even when it hurt her so badly).

The ramp of the Falcon lowered as he reflected, and he blinked in the heavy light of two stars. The twin suns were setting over the desert, casting long shadows from even the low homesteads, and Poe strode out onto the flat sands of Tatooine. 

There was a flicker of feeling in his gut, and Poe walked around a house made of packed sand and stone to see a familiar figure, flickering at the center of his vision.

His breath caught painfully: when he blinked, Leia was gone, like a mirage on the desert horizon. Poe wiped a tear from his and kept walking, unsure if he’d seen her or not. 

But, there was a figure up ahead who he knew was actually present: her willowy frame was framed by a halo of light from the suns, and BB-8 stood at her side, providing silent support as Rey stared off in the distance. 

Poe took a step forward and stopped. What would he say to her? What would she want to hear from him right now? 

How could he say  _ we’re not dead, but more importantly  _ you’re  _ not dead, and if you’re not dead, can you let me stand with you a little while longer until the storm inside me settles, maybe even until everything else turns to sand and stardust?  _

No, he couldn’t say that. Rey looked like she was working towards her own kind of peace. It wasn’t his time to talk to her now, and not his place to interrupt her. 

Poe felt the new presence before he heard the footsteps. A hand clapped him on the shoulder, and Poe smiled before Finn spoke.

“I think I can guess what you’re thinking,” Finn said, low enough to not distract Rey. Poe grunted and fiddled with his bandage to avoid incriminating himself. “But can I ask you something?”

“Of course.” Poe made sure to match the volume of Finn’s voice, so they wouldn’t pull Rey’s attention from whatever Jedi matters she was focusing on.

“Why did you care so much what I wanted to tell Rey?” Finn asked with a curiosity that was not quite curious.

Poe’s neck flushed for not a single reason connected to the heat radiating off the sand.

“I … uh… I’m not sure what you mean, buddy.”

“Don’t do that.” Finn bumped his shoulder. “We were about to die, Poe, and you asked. Why would that be the  _ last _ thing you ever thought?”

“I know you and Rey have a special connection,” Poe began. “Always have. It’s … not something I can … copy. And I guess … I wondered if …”

_ If all I’d ever be to her was the memory of a person who used to argue with her, an echo in the story next to the name of a much braver man. _

He swallowed the words and looked out to where Rey stood. 

“Ah. Got it.”

Finn looked smug when Poe glanced over; he knew now how Rey and Finn felt about each other, and his concern (agony, really) of the last few days seemed not so much silly as exhausting.

“You going to be reading my mind a lot more now that you’re going to be training as a Jedi?” Poe asked, letting Finn know what  _ he  _ knew.

And Finn raised his eyebrows at Poe’s question, slightly surprised.

“Yeah.” Poe snorted and ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes aching from the light (but still unwilling or unable to look away from her). “Guess you don’t have to be Force-Sensitive to figure  _ some _ things out.”

“Fair enough.” Finn grinned. “I never meant to keep it from you. And in my defense, you’ve seemed pretty anti-Jedi-stuff recently, so you can see why I didn’t want you to know.”

Poe squirmed at the reminder of his harsh words to Rey. “That wasn’t it. I—“

“I understand now. Trust me.” Finn let out a quiet laugh. “I told Rey. When are  _ you  _ going to talk to her?” Poe didn’t have an answer to that. “War’s over, Dameron. Time for you to get that farm started. Maybe even that family you’re always wishing for when you think no one’s looking?”

“Maybe.” Poe cleared his throat, still flushed, and changed course, his eyes settling on the woman in the sun again. “Do you think we’re bothering her, standing here?”

Finn clearly thought about it for a second. “No, I don’t think so. She should know she’s not alone.”

“Yeah.” Poe nodded and wrapped his arm around Finn’s shoulder. “Because none of us are.”

As though she could finally hear them, Rey turned from the binary sunset, and Poe swore her smile was brighter than every star in the galaxy. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading xoxoxox


End file.
